As for ongoing data; they don't really need polls, since they can track actual behaviour of everyone in-game. They don't need to poll to find out whether people like LFR, they just check their data and see how many people are actually running LFR. That removes the possibility of people ignoring the poll, or trolling it, or being biased in their responses, and gets right to how people actually act.

Their data can't show if people LIKE something in the game, I can't stand LFR but I do it on my alts, people bitch about dailies but they do them...........see?

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Originally Posted by xanzul

Again the people on these forums who do things because they think they are "forced" to are outliers and not representative of the typical Wow player. People pay to play this game and if they aren't happy they are going to not only stop paying but stop playing as well.

You sir are in denial, just because they don't like ONE thing in the game that they do does not mean they would unsubscribe from a game which there are LOTS of things they do enjoy, take me for example.......

1) I can't stand LFR I think it is the worst thing ever put into this game but I do it because of valor and alts

2) I like to do pet battles, play the AH, do heroic scenarios, raid heroic modes.

So yeah, people will still pay even if they do 1 thing they don't enjoy because of the other things they do in the game, I respect you standing up for Blizzard but my god this statement of yours is pure delusional.

Looking back on it now though, did they really lose that bet? Or did they just lose a single hand then fold on the table too quickly? The number losses weren't anything huge like we have today. There were other reasons for people leaving at the time beyond those we are talking about as well I'm sure. The relatively small number they lost due to "get better or quit" seems like it would have been the better choice in the long run.

And I do agree with their attempted fixes being far worse than what was shipped. The thing is though, they HAVE TO understand that now and they still are reluctant to do anything major about it. I know I've lost faith in their ability to put this game on the right tack again in my eyes.

Folded, or were forced to fold too quickly, because, in essence, the lvl 85 content tuning was teh only game aspect which blizzard was willing to reverse course on. Also, given how LFD worked, I am not sure why they thought they could put challenging, brain-on content into such a sausage grinder system.

10/25 lockouts could have been reversed and weren't. other changes would have been harder or impossible to change - linear 'no-choices' questing, for example. I think there were many things which collectively managed to annoyed a fairly broad cross-section of the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by jakeic

wow is not a business, it is a game.

Ask the ATVI board and institutional shareholders (as well as vivendi and kotick) what it is, I assure you that the people who ultimately control wow think of it and see dollar signs (in 10-digit increments).

Also, given how LFD worked, I am not sure why they thought they could put challenging, brain-on content into such a sausage grinder system.

They've never been very forthcoming with reasons why these choices were made. It would be fascinating if someone would leak details, but I doubt that will happen until WoW (+ Blizzard?) dissolves and the people go elsewhere.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

Im not unhappy with the presence of LFR, i am just intelligent enough to know when such a loud outcry is present for so long it shows that something needs looking at. It muight just be a minor tweak, a clever person to make a few adjustments.

they should get the team that changed the wsg gy's and claimed it would stop gy farming on this immediately?

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Originally Posted by MoanaLisa

I'm apparently alone here in thinking that they are going to take a huge chunk of the game--but not all of it--to F2P sooner rather than later. I honestly believe that just about everything we see going forward should be viewed in that light including all of the external stuff like cash stores, virtual realms and the rest. To me, it's obviously preparation for what is a probable expansion of the lower levels of the game to another revenue model. That's my bet. We'll see how it pans out in the next year or so. But I think it will be sooner rather than later.

issue i have it that their annual western subs are still likely well over 500m in revenue, its just too much for them to contemplate replacing by another mechanism. I think they are more likely to go to a dual-system of micro-transactions + sub fee.

going from memory on their financials, I don't think current wow revenue levels without sub fees would even pay server costs annually, to say nothing of new product development. That is a huge amount of blood they need to suck from western players under any sort of f2p model.

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Originally Posted by Anarchor

Depends how you look at it. I believe it would not have been able to 'hook' the hardcore mmo players that wanted to immerse themself into a second life. And the rest of the playerbase, the casuals etc. would've been too fickle to keep hooked up for long.

this is my view as well - a game where you can beat the biggest baddie currently in game within a few weeks /played at most from starting, with most of the outdoor world fairly structured with compulsory exact quest order, limited remaining optional grinds (and none too long), etc, is going to have less replay value than diablo 2 did. Be sure and make sure instances, rather than being 2+ hour challenging events, become 20-minute 'hit your aoe key' and say 'gogogo' things with complete strangers who you are unlikely to ever see again.

seriously, once you beat d2 on normal, was beating it on nightmare THAT big a deal? at that point it was 100% gear-driven, you had seen everything...then if you beat nightmare but didn't beat hell, did you feel bad? did you feel you didn't 'finish the game'? for most people, of course not.

All of the threads i've seen have been of players who think they are hardcore. The real top players don't care about LFR.

Actually while they don't care about the feature itself... ultimately they need to care. Why? LFR does draw people away from normal guilds = food for heroic guilds. While I don't count myself as being "THE" top. I don't regard 175/350 ranked being THE top, recruitment was very very hard. So hard infact that after 6 years of being GM of that guild, I threw in the towel. And I am not the only one. Recruitment was the nr 1 thing on my agenda every day. While before the days of LFR it was pretty doable to try and get people in once a week or even less. I wonder how that suddenly changed.

So yeah while LFR as a raiding enviroment (if you can call it that) has no affect on heroic raiders or normal raiders - it affects their recruitment. And thus affect them.

edit: just to clarify:

these people that run LFR might not be suited for guilds that run heroics and are TOP of the world. But there might be other raiders in that normal guild that would make it in a TOP of the world guild. Now due to lack of recruits this normal raider gets less raids or his guild falls over. Now this player will need to find a new guild. Perhaps another normal guild or even a heroic guild. It is a snowball effect really. Less people get interested in "real" raiding. In my heroic guild we had people who played 100% a day almost (no work etc). This guy traded heroic raiding for LFR the day it came out. Just because he didn't want to be put on a schedule anymore. While he hated LFR vs Heroic... the no schedule was THE thing he was actually looking for.

So it does draw away people from those high end guilds.

Meanwhile people who play LFR do not like it but do it for the GAINS... not because it is fun. LFR has a lot of potential it is not currently fullfilling.

Actually while they don't care about the feature itself... ultimately they need to care. Why? LFR does draw people away from normal guilds = food for heroic guilds. While I don't count myself as being "THE" top. I don't regard 175/350 ranked being THE top, recruitment was very very hard. So hard infact that after 6 years of being GM of that guild, I threw in the towel. And I am not the only one. Recruitment was the nr 1 thing on my agenda every day. While before the days of LFR it was pretty doable to try and get people in once a week or even less. I wonder how that suddenly changed.

So yeah while LFR as a raiding enviroment (if you can call it that) has no affect on heroic raiders or normal raiders - it affects their recruitment. And thus affect them.

edit: just to clarify:

these people that run LFR might not be suited for guilds that run heroics and are TOP of the world. But there might be other raiders in that normal guild that would make it in a TOP of the world guild. Now due to lack of recruits this normal raider gets less raids or his guild falls over. Now this player will need to find a new guild. Perhaps another normal guild or even a heroic guild. It is a snowball effect really. Less people get interested in "real" raiding. In my heroic guild we had people who played 100% a day almost (no work etc). This guy traded heroic raiding for LFR the day it came out. Just because he didn't want to be put on a schedule anymore. While he hated LFR vs Heroic... the no schedule was THE thing he was actually looking for.

So it does draw away people from those high end guilds.

Meanwhile people who play LFR do not like it but do it for the GAINS... not because it is fun. LFR has a lot of potential it is not currently fullfilling.

There is a flip side to this. Difficulty. There is no middle ground at present.

You have ONE extreme which is LFR,

then you have Normal which is far harder than previously in Wrath.
Heroic is just as brutal as it has always been.

You also have 10/25 being the same lockout.

So this kills pugs as sharing the same lockout means you are only going to turn to LFR for upgrades where as previously you could run a pug in 10/25 normal and get some items.

Flex will help people who want a bit more of a challenge but a fairly pug-able experience. I can't remember if it will be on a different lock out to 10/25 (It better fucking be tbh)

LFR does not kill guilds its merely the only option for a lot of people. We needed flex a long time ago to give that middle ground and a way for pugs to get going again on a big scale. Pugs help more people get into guild raiding and were quite a good bit of fun.

There is a flip side to this. Difficulty. There is no middle ground at present.

You have ONE extreme which is LFR,

then you have Normal which is far harder than previously in Wrath.
Heroic is just as brutal as it has always been.

You also have 10/25 being the same lockout.

So this kills pugs as sharing the same lockout means you are only going to turn to LFR for upgrades where as previously you could run a pug in 10/25 normal and get some items.

Flex will help people who want a bit more of a challenge but a fairly pug-able experience. I can't remember if it will be on a different lock out to 10/25 (It better fucking be tbh)

LFR does not kill guilds its merely the only option for a lot of people. We needed flex a long time ago to give that middle ground and a way for pugs to get going again on a big scale. Pugs help more people get into guild raiding and were quite a good bit of fun.

Agree about the Flexraiding. That would have helped immensely. But the way it is currently with LFR from my experience, does draw people away. Shared lockouts of not.

I actually (and yes that will hurt guilds more I take it) wish LFR would be a shared lockout. Just so people wouldn't "feel forced" to go do LFR for XYZ reasons. But I do see the "beauty" of a nonshared lockout. Hell I would even go as far as to have no shared lockout at all. I know that last bit is conflicting... I am just saying that if they do Y why not go all the way... there is beauty on either side.

Agree about the Flexraiding. That would have helped immensely. But the way it is currently with LFR from my experience, does draw people away. Shared lockouts of not.

I actually (and yes that will hurt guilds more I take it) wish LFR would be a shared lockout. Just so people wouldn't "feel forced" to go do LFR for XYZ reasons. But I do see the "beauty" of a nonshared lockout. Hell I would even go as far as to have no shared lockout at all. I know that last bit is conflicting... I am just saying that if they do Y why not go all the way... there is beauty on either side.

I think shared lockouts _ARE_ the problem.

Before the 10/25 shared came along we had multitude of pugs running and casual guilds galore. Now most of those casual guilds struggle or just go to LFR.

LFR as it is, has a huge delay from it opening. So I don't think it hurts raids too much at present. We must remember more people raid in LFR than ever raided before so its + outweighs the - in this respect.

It could do with some tweaks, though certainly. I think also adjusting the loot table like so.

LFR has items you can get that cover all inventory slots including the tier set.
Flex has new/unique items and upgraded ilevel versions of LFR items.
Normal mode has all flex items with upgraded ilevels and unique items + mounts
Heroic upgraded ilevel items of all other modes unique mounts and a special phase/boss for heroic only.

This new difficulty also has a separate Raid lockout from Raid Finder and Normal difficulty, allowing you to take part in all three if you so desire.

Originally Posted by Vaelorian

I actually (and yes that will hurt guilds more I take it) wish LFR would be a shared lockout. Just so people wouldn't "feel forced" to go do LFR for XYZ reasons.

I don't personally know anyone from the raiding guild I was in who felt compelled to do LFR. In fact, half the players outright refused. I was one of the weirdos who actually enjoyed doing LFR for quick valor. It helped that I was a healer so I got faster queues. The separate lockout is the way to go because then you can go back to the days where you had training teams farming the easier content and a core team beating their head against progression. If people dropped away from progression they could always downgrade to the training raids and you had a big pool of players to replace them from.

I don't personally know anyone from the raiding guild I was in who felt compelled to do LFR. In fact, half the players outright refused. I was one of the weirdos who actually enjoyed doing LFR for quick valor. It helped that I was a healer so I got faster queues. The separate lockout is the way to go because then you can go back to the days where you had training teams farming the easier content and a core team beating their head against progression. If people dropped away from progression they could always downgrade to the training raids and you had a big pool of players to replace them from.

Apart from the whines on the forum when LFR just got out, I too felt forced to go LFR even tho LFR is the only option for me. I cannot commit to a normal mode or heroic mode guild anymore. So my only option is the braindead LFR. To progress my character I feel FORCED to go do LFR.

Not anymore tho. I got out of that mindset and I rarely do LFR at all. I hate it. But yeah you sometimes want a new item. Where can I get that apart from LFR? Valor? Yeah I have that already. How did I get that valor? Yeah mostly LFR... why? Efficient.... There is another option tho... dailies/LFD/scenarios. But thats inefficient. And tbh also very boring and easy. Sure you can do it efficient ONE time every day. Yeah thats why I do those one timers... when I get to play. Which is mainly only during the weekend = missing out on valor during the week.

So yeah... apart from raiding guilds "forcing" their players or players themselves feeling they OWE it to their guild to be prepared best they can for raids... this is another way of being forced.

Apart from the whines on the forum when LFR just got out, I too felt forced to go LFR even tho LFR is the only option for me. I cannot commit to a normal mode or heroic mode guild anymore. So my only option is the braindead LFR. To progress my character I feel FORCED to go do LFR.

When I came to the realization that normal raiding had gotten too painful on my server and that the only content that Blizzard was going to release in the foreseeable future centered around raids I unsubscribed. I'm not going to pay $15 a month of a game that I don't enjoy.

Originally Posted by Vaelorian

Sure you can do it efficient ONE time every day. Yeah thats why I do those one timers... when I get to play. Which is mainly only during the weekend = missing out on valor during the week.

This was another slap in the face that Blizzard reinstated in MoP. In Cataclysm they had the sense to make valor bonuses weekly so that knocking out seven heroic dungeons on a Saturday yielded the same rewards as knocking out one a day. Now players who don't have the luxury of playing weekdays have to work almost twice as hard on the weekend to get the same benefit. I deliberately said "work" because that's how it begins to feel. That's yet another reason I decided to quit the game. I like being able to do what I want on my own schedule instead of feeling enslaved by dailies and raids.

This was another slap in the face that Blizzard reinstated in MoP. In Cataclysm they had the sense to make valor bonuses weekly so that knocking out seven heroic dungeons on a Saturday yielded the same rewards as knocking out one a day. Now players who don't have the luxury of playing weekdays have to work almost twice as hard on the weekend to get the same benefit. I deliberately said "work" because that's how it begins to feel. That's yet another reason I decided to quit the game. I like being able to do what I want on my own schedule instead of feeling enslaved by dailies and raids.

To be fair, at this point there are so many ways to gain Valor that the 'one a day' thing isn't really an issue. You can do a heroic, a scenario, a heroic scenario, the Champions and Barrens weeklies and be a long way toward your cap.

I'd also argue that in reality knocking out 7 Heriocs on one day in one sitting is probably actually less work and effort than logging in every day to do one. That's why players preferred to do it.

I'd also argue that in reality knocking out 7 Heriocs on one day in one sitting is probably actually less work and effort than logging in every day to do one. That's why players preferred to do it.

It's not just heroics. They introduced coins that give bonus loot rolls and those are only available once per day as well. Besides, how do you figure doing seven heroics in one sitting is less effort than doing one a day? As far as I know there is no short-term buff that shortens the time it takes to do your next heroic. In both cases the process is the same: queue, wait, and do the run. Very few people in pugs are looking to chain heroics, and the odds of finding someone in your guild who is willing to chain heroics with you are about the same as finding someone to do one a day with you. I don't see a significant time advantage either way.

It's not just heroics. They introduced coins that give bonus loot rolls and those are only available once per day as well. .

What? The charms are available from a quest tjat can be done once per WEEK. The 50 coins that feed into that quest are available from a variety of sources (dailies, drops off mobs).

I am finding it's not hard to valor cap on one character for the week by thursday, or at the latest friday. That gives the weekend to play alts with 50% extra VP generation.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson

Their data can't show if people LIKE something in the game, I can't stand LFR but I do it on my alts, people bitch about dailies but they do them...........see?

If you don't like LFR, why are you running it?

The reasons you're running it are why you like having the feature. It's like if your local coffee shop offered free donuts, and you were complaining because you were getting fat and hating yourself because of all the free donuts you don't even like that much. Obviously, part of you does like the LFR system, even if it's just the rewards you're doing it for.

I really don't have any patience for the "I hate this stuff but I keep playing it every day/week anyway" argument. That's either peculiarly masochistic, or you're not being totally honest about your motivations.

I am finding it's not hard to valor cap on one character for the week by thursday, or at the latest friday. That gives the weekend to play alts with 50% extra VP generation.

I wouldn't know because my subscription ran out shortly before 5.3. Back then you could easily valor cap by Thursday through dailies, but whenever I was unable to log in during the week I could play all weekend long without valor capping. Maybe the situation is fixed now. The fact that this imbalance existed at release, however, was a mistake on Blizzard's part. I agree that no one should be able to valor cap in 3 hours, but it's also not right for consistent players to valor cap in 6 hours while weekend players spend 14 hours doing the same.

Maybe it's better now. I wouldn't know because my subscription ran out shortly before 5.3. Back then you could easily valor cap by Thursday through dailies, but whenever I was unable to log in during the week I could play all weekend long without valor capping.

I cap mostly through LFR + heroic 5 man + scenarios. Random heroic + scenario give you 130 VP the first time you do the pair each day. That's 390 VP in three days. Add four LFR for 360 more VP (plus some extra for some of the minibosses, but ignore that). We're then at 750 VP. The last 250 VP can come dailies, more heroics/scenarios (65 for each additional pair on a day), IoT rares, or the 5.3 weekly quest (200 VP). I don't do heroic scenarios or 5 man challenge modes.

The advantage of this is that you can queue for a scenario, a heroic 5 man, and LFR all at the same time, so there's very little downtime waiting in queues.

"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"Almost every time I have gotten to know a critic personally, they keep up with the criticism but lose the venom." -- Ghostcrawler
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome." -- Samuel Johnson